Twitter deal turned into a circus show, analysts say

Wedbush Securities analysts Dan Ives and John Katsingris said Elon Musk's bizarre tweet putting his $44 billion Twitter acquisition on hold has turned the entire deal into a circus show. On Friday, Musk said that his deal to take Twitter private at $54.20 per share would be paused due to details supporting the calculations that spam and fake accounts represent less than 5% of the social media platform's users.

The Tesla chief executive has previously pledged to crack down on spam bots to improve the user experience on Twitter. The self-described Free Speech Absolutist has expressed interest in open sourcing Twitter's algorithm to increase transparency and said he would overturn former President Donald Trump's ban.

IN 2024, BUT SAYS Ives and Katsingris said on Monday that Wall Street will view the impact of the tweet as either Musk negotiating for a lower deal price or Musk walking away with a $1 billion break up fee.

If Musk does decide to go down the deal path, a clear renegotiation is likely to be on the table, which calls into question a number of topics, including the financing path, prior financing partners, and employee reaction they said.

The note says that Musk is using Twitter filing spam accounts as a way to get out of this deal in a changing market. The nature of Musk creating so much uncertainty in a tweet and not a filing is troubling for us and the Street and has now sent this whole deal into a circus show with many questions and no concrete answers as to the path of the deal going forward. Prior to Musk's tweet on Friday, Twitter said the deal was expected to close in 2022, subject to shareholder and regulatory approval and the satisfaction of custom closing conditions.

Musk said in a follow-up tweet that he is still committed to completing the acquisition.